Romero calls ABQ Mayor Martin Chavez ‘fiscally irresponsible’

ABQ mayoral candidate Richard Romero at a press conference on Thursday. (Photo by Marjorie Childress)

Albuquerque mayoral candidate Richard Romero had strong words yesterday about Mayor Martin Chavez’s 2010 budget, calling it “fiscally irresponsible” given the tough times the city faces.

Citing a national report showing that 30 percent of Albuquerque’s roads are in mediocre or poor condition, costing drivers almost $600 each in car maintenance per year, Romero said Chavez was “raiding” the city’s capital improvement program to pay city operating expenses instead of making hard choices.

Romero was referring to the shift of property tax revenue out of the capital improvement program to plug a projected general operating budget deficit in fiscal year 2010. The budget was just approved by the City Council at its May 18 meeting.

This isn’t the first time Chavez has shifted capital improvement dollars to plug operating deficits, Romero said. In an Albuquerque Journal opinion piece this week he said, “the mayor’s 2004, 2009, and 2010 budgets borrowed money from future bond elections to cover general operating costs.”

The shifting of these dollars, his Journal op-ed continued, has left the city with only half of what it would otherwise have had for repair and maintenance of roads, parks and other public facilities. As one example, he said, the city could have financed the reconstruction of the interchange at Paseo del Norte and I-25, which is at the top of the city’s stimulus wish list.

Chavez is playing a game of “smoke and mirrors,” Romero said at yesterdays press conference, with the outcome of “digging a deeper hole,” when instead the city needs to ensure that operating costs don’t exceed growth in revenues.

And the mayor should begin by “weeding out waste” in government, he said, starting with his own office.

Romero charged that Chavez has shifted government from a professional operation to a “political machine,” padding the city payroll with political appointees.

“The number of political appointments employed at City Hall has surged under Mayor Chavez,” said Romero. “We’re going back to the era of a political machine, due to Chavez now running for a fourth term. We need to dismantle it.”

Former city treasurer Lou Hoffman, who served in that office from 1994 to 2006, joined Romero at the press conference.

The increase in political appointees began almost immediately during Chavez’s first term in the mid-’90s, Hoffman said.

“We never had deputy CAOs [Chief Administrative Officers] before Marty,” he said.

“In 1994, Mayor [Louis] Saavadera’s office was allocated three full time employees, and the CAO’s Office had seven. A year later, under Marty, these numbers ballooned to 5 and 13, respectively. These changes represented an overnight increase in mayoral staffing of 80 percent.”

“Approved staffing for the mayor and CAO now stands at 7 and 14,” he continued, “which is a 110 percent increase over the level of staffing inherited by Marty in his first term.”

And it’s not just the mayor, Hoffman said. City Council staffing has increased by 93 percent since 1995.

“During the last 15 years the combined budget for the mayor and CAO has increased 282 percent from $742,000 to $2,838,000,” Hoffman said. “The City Council budget, $845,000 in 1994 and now $3,805,000, grew by 350 percent.”

But, Hoffman continued, had the mayoral and council budgets grown at the same pace as the general fund, they would now total only $2,983,000, not $6,643,000, giving the city $3,659,000 more to spend on public needs in 2009 alone.

Narrowing his analysis to the past five years, Hoffman said the budgets for these offices have increased at three to four times that of the general fund. Budget increases in 2009 for the mayor, CAO and Council Services were 12.4 percent, 12.8 percent and 10.5 percent, respectively, he said, while the general fund budget decreased by 4.5 percent.

Romero said one reason the council’s budget has ballooned is because councilors and the mayor are “at war.” The City Council has its own planning staff, he said, because the city planning staff under the mayor’s administration is unresponsive to them.

“If we start with a zero-based budget, with the mayor and the council working together, I am convinced we would find the waste and the excess that’s there,” Romero said. “But in order to do that, the mayor would have to work with the council to find efficiencies. But they’re at war. It’s time for a change.”

Deborah James, spokesperson for the mayor, said Romero’s charges don’t hold water when you consider that Albuquerque just received a triple-A bond rating from Standard & Poor.

“Romero says he wants an honest assessment of what’s going on,” James said. “Fine, so let’s look at what outsiders say about Albuquerque. A couple of weeks ago we found out that investors have given Albuquerque the highest bond rating possible. Wall Street investment firms don’t have a political agenda when it comes to Albuquerque, so that says a lot about how the city is doing.”

Additionally, James said, Kiplinger Personal Finance magazine just named Albuquerque number two on its 2009 Best Cities list.

“If Romero is asking for an honest assessment,” she said, “it doesn’t get more honest than the evidence about how the city is viewed from the outside.”

Chavez has yet to declare his candidacy for a fourth term, although he qualified for public financing and received $328,000 in public funds in April to run a campaign. When he does make his widely expected formal announcement, he’ll be in a three-way race with Romero, who is a former president pro tem of the New Mexico Senate, and current state Rep. Richard “R.J.” Berry, both of whom have also received public financing.